


meet you after dark

by jolie_unfiltrd



Series: i have zero chill re: gensa [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Academic Sansa, Accountant Gendry, Bartender Sansa, Donuts Are A Necessity, Existential Crises, F/M, Gendry wears a beanie because of course he does, Graveyard Life Chats, Misogyny, Oh right because I'm still SUPER into Gensa apparently, Past Arya/Gendry (mentioned), Quarter-life crises, Rampant Sexism (mentioned), Self Confidence Issues, Self-Discovery, Self-Doubt, Self-Indulgent, This baby (slaps roof) can fit so many FEELINGS into it, This started out as a Nanowrimo drabble how did it end up like this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:35:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28391784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolie_unfiltrd/pseuds/jolie_unfiltrd
Summary: It is near midnight on a Friday night when Gendry Waters and Sansa Stark see each other, for the first time in almost ten years. The bar is hazy with second-hand smoke, the low thump of the bass echoing in their ears, but she stumbles and he reaches and something in them says "oh."(Two encounters between lost souls, nearly a decade apart).
Relationships: Sansa Stark/Gendry Waters
Series: i have zero chill re: gensa [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1961233
Comments: 10
Kudos: 43





	1. prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay i really feel like i should tell you that this is almost like a prologue and really is NOT required reading for part two, but i did want to post them in chronological order. 
> 
> (and yes i know. jolie, more gensa??? i can't stop myself. sorry not sorry at alllll).

It is just before midnight on New Year Eve, and Sansa Stark has finally managed to wiggle out from under the arm of Harry Hardyng, who she'd chosen as a date for his seeming indifference towards her - but the more she tried to distance herself, the tighter he held onto her waist. It wasn't until she offered to get them drinks and conveniently deposited him near the orbit of men and women around Margaery Tyrell that she managed to escape.

It is just before midnight on New Years Eve, and Gendry Waters doesn't know what to do with himself, doesn't even know why he's at this fucking party to begin with. He and Arya weren't together anymore, and yet he was still drawn into these social obligations, these parties with the Stark family. It wasn't as though he didn't enjoy spending time with Robb or Jon, Bran or even Rickon, or being invited to lavish get-togethers with an open bar. His main complaint was that there was always so many fucking people, and so many people fucking or trying to fuck in shadowy corners and he'd stumbled upon Arya one too many times and - he had to get out.

He escapes up to the roof and stumbles upon the person he's been seeing in his periphery for years, auburn hair dark as midnight and pale skin shimmering under the stars.

"Gendry?"

"Sansa." He raises his beer for a toast, even as he strides up next to her, standing close enough he can smell her perfume, can see the edges of her pale pink lips and the way they have been bitten, over and over again. "Didn't expect to see you up here." 

"I didn't expect to see you here at all," she replies, sipping her glass of champagne and glancing at him, taking in his button-down shirt that has been rolled up at the wrists to reveal the bottom edge of a tattoo on his left forearm, the unbuttoned collar because he can't fucking breathe in places like this with people like this, in the casual way his hair is tousled. It makes her want to run her fingers through it, it makes her want to be cruel. "Didn't you and Arya break up, like, forever ago?"

"Where's Harry?" he challenges, though there's no heat in it, no offense taken. He'd wondered the same thing himself.

She rolls her eyes. "Next to Margaery, hopefully. Or anyone else except me."

"That bad, huh?"

Sansa shudders. "I didn't even know it was possible for a person to be that handsy."

Gendry stares at her, considering, before snatching her champagne glass out of her hands, and carefully placing their drinks on the cement, a few feet away.

"What are you _doing_?" hisses Sansa, desperate for something to hold on to, something to drink to make her head feel fuzzy and her heart feel less like it is careening towards anything and anyone in particular.

"I'm going to teach you how to punch."

Sansa curls her manicured hands into a fist, thinking that she'd very much like to punch him, as a matter of fact, but he steps closer, and takes her hands in his own. His hands are rough, calloused, but stupidly gentle as he handles her as though she might break. He carefully relaxes her hands and helps her to close them into fists, once more, with her thumbs on the outside.

"You'll break your thumbs if you hit like that," he murmurs, and it is the only thing he says and he looks straight into her starlit eyes - she is almost his height, in those towering heels - and their closeness is the only cue he has to force himself backwards, to force himself away from her.

Sansa follows along as he teaches her to hold her hands up, to guard her face, to jab with her less dominant hand, to punch with her right. He allows her to practice on him, using his hands to catch her fists and show her how to keep her wrists steady, keep her stance strong. It only takes a few minutes, but Sansa is taken aback by this man who does not offer to beat Harry up, or offer to get Robb to intimidate him together, or warn her away from men altogether. But who, instead, takes her fragile fists and teaches her to defend herself. It is unthinkable, it is nothing less than she expected from him but she finds that she is unmoored, all the same.

Gendry teaches her for a few minutes before he is satisfied that she has some basic knowledge, before she assures him that she will practice, before he steps away from her, shoving his hands in his pockets, realizing that he is in her orbit and must wrench himself away before he is inexorably pulled in. 

“Heard you’re going to law school next year,” he says as he steps back, eager to put distance between them, even for their future selves.

Sansa presses her lips together so tightly they whiten at the edges, before she slides her hands down her silken dress in a self-conscious motion, one she isn’t even aware of. “Your sources aren’t what they used to be.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

She wraps her arms around herself, gripping her elbows tightly. “I didn’t get in.” It is the first time she says it out loud. She had shown the letter to her parents a week ago, had flung it at Arya and cried her bloody eyes out, but she’d never said it, not until now.

“What?” he says, shock in every inch of his honest face, and she is grateful for that, even as she finds herself unable to look at him head-on.

“I –“ it is easier the second time around, and she exhales the confession into the wind. “I didn’t get in.” She attempts and fails a cavalier shrug, merely jerking her shoulder up.

Gendry steps closer to her, reaching out a hand as if to comfort her – but he stops himself just in time, rifling through the words he knows to find some that would be appropriate, that could ease her pain and offer just the right amount of condolences and faith in her next step.

“Well, fuck,” he settles on, wincing afterwards until she lets out a short laugh.

“That was my thought, too.”

They stand together under the starlight for a moment, skin glowing golden with the string lights from below.

Sansa lets out a shuddering sigh. “I don’t know what to do now,” she admits, quietly. Gendry pretends to move closer just to hear her better. “My dad – he offered to write a letter, to appeal the decision but I – “

“You said no.”

She nods, eyelashes fluttering rapidly as she does her best not to let it overwhelm her, once more. “He doesn’t understand, but I wanted to do this on my own.”

He can’t help it – he snorts.

Her eyes cut to him, affronted and indignant.

“What? On your own – after interning with the Stark firm, applying with the Stark name? Your name carries weight, Sansa.” He worries that he has gone too far, pushed the envelope of their tentative half-friendship far past the bounds of politeness and casual occasional conversations – but when he looks at her, he used to see fragile birds with fragile bones, ones that would break once they flew from the nest. Now, he sees talons, and underneath the hurt, he sees a backbone of steel. He shouldn’t walk away without telling her that she’s more than the weight of her name or the expectations within - but he doesn't know how. 

She inhales and looks back out at the sky, not bothering to blink away the tears the streak down her cheeks. “Not enough, apparently.”

He nudges her shoulder gently with his own. “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Can you apply again next year?”

Sansa nods, slowly, and he watches carefully as he asks, “Do you want to?”

She stills – as if no one has asked her this question yet, as if it is the right question, as if it is an answer to one she’s been asking herself. She rubs her thumb against the palm of her other hand, a nervous habit that she never quite broke. “I… I don’t know,” she says, finally, before turning to look at him, before realizing he is still much too close and not quite close enough. “What dreams of yours can I crush before the new year?” she asks, enough of a smile on her face to let him know she is teasing, enough sharpness in her gaze to let him know they are on thin ice.

“I’ll take my accounting certification exams this spring.”

“Is that what you want to do?” she tosses her hair over her shoulder and glances back to the stars, pretending as if his answer does not matter to her (it doesn’t). (She tells herself she doesn’t care at all, never has and never will). (A girl with thorns is better than a soft girl, one that will be trampled underfoot by reckless boys and law school admission boards and mothers with different dreams than she wants, after all). (The beginning of a transmutation that will not leave her unscarred

“Not at all.” The frank tone surprises them both.

A soft laugh bursts from Sansa’s lips. “Then why are you going to be an accountant?”

“I won’t _be_ an accountant,” he replies vehemently. “I will do the work and get the paycheck and go home to do what I really want to do.”

She looks at him, then, really looks at him – the scruffy lanky boy, turned into a leanly muscled man with hair that never seemed to stay in place, a sharp suit disguising all his rougher edges. She remembers when he’d first started coming around with Arya, the prickly side of him that refused trust and any overtures of friendship. And she understands.

“Stability, then.”

He nods, shoulders sinking down in relief. “Enough money to be able to do what I want.”

She asks, quietly. “What do you want, then?”

“I want to be a graphic designer. Or a tattoo artist, maybe both?” He’d only ever told Arya this, and she thought it was a passing fancy, but he finds that this rooftop is a place for easy confessions. Or maybe he felt that she’d told him her secrets, so he owed her one, too. Or maybe he just wanted to tell her that he was more than a job, and she could be, too. Or maybe it just a spur of the moment mistake that he would think about for years to come. (Who lets strangers into their dreams, like that?)

It is easy to see, even as they stand shoulder to shoulder against the midnight sky, the gulf between them: a pretty rich girl who has always gotten everything she wanted, a rough and tough boy from the wrong side of town who will demand what he wants from this life no matter the cost. They are paper-thin, in that moment, filled with dreams and disillusionment and the countdown begins.

(This is only the precipice, the beginning, but they don’t know that yet).

_Ten... nine... eight..._

It is almost midnight on New Years Eve, and she is standing on the roof with her sister's ex-boyfriend, shivering in a thin dress, eyes tracing the lines of his shoulders, his strong arms, his lean waist as if she were the artist learning to draw, as if the only subject she would want do depict is him, as if she could stare at him for hours and days and eons and never drink her fill.

_seven...six...five...four..._

It is almost midnight on New Years Eve, and Gendry is trying to convince himself not to kiss her. He hears the count-down echo from below, and steps closer to this girl he's known for years, known in half-conversations and sideways glances and curiosity that turned into fascination, given half a heartbeat to consider her, realizing that it's possible he doesn't know her at all, but he'd like to.

Sansa looks at him, listening to the chorus of Auld Lang Syne from their friends and family down below, bends to pick up their drinks, and returns him his beer.

They clink glasses together, refusing to meet the other's eyes, refusing to wonder what might have been had they been a little braver, a little less cautious and fearful of what people would say, what path they could take.

"Cheers," she murmurs, and they drink in silence.

Her lips tingle, and she does not know why.

His hand burns to be in her hair, caressing the soft curve of her waist, and he ignores it completely.

Any fantasies between them are assumed to be theirs and theirs alone; this makes it more of a secret, but also it turns the edges of the fantasy a bitter yellow, less like a dream and more like a stretch, something that can never and will never come true.

Any fantasies between them are put to rest.

(At least, temporarily).

The moment rewinds.

Gendry's eyes look intently at her as the count-down ends, gaze searching her face for some hint, some clue, some wisp of hope that he is not alone in his longing, in this feeling of belonging when he's with her - whether that's in the corner of a party or on a roof or in a garden.

What he finds must satisfy him, or at least give him an inkling of her feelings, for one moment they are a few feet apart, Sansa's hands fidgeting nervously at her waist and the next - he wraps one arm around her waist and tugs her close, the other winding through her perfectly tousled curls, kissing her fiercely, all rough and bruising and passionate and it is a kiss where you pour your heart out.

Sansa mewls helplessly as every ounce of her melts to meet his form, every molecule of her being begging to be closer, ever closer to him. One hand rests on the beating thumping whirr that is his heartbeat, the other strokes the soft skin at the back of his neck. She offers passion in equal measure, but hers is rooted in something less desperate, something more hopeful.

They part, panting, but he can't pull his gaze from her perfect lips and traces them with his thumb.

She is watching him with awe, with wonder, with a delight that is unparalleled.

The moment rewinds.

Gendry steps closer, settling his hands on her waist, having made a decision, and Sansa's hands flutter from her side to land, hesitantly, on his chest, gazing up at him through her lashes.

_three...two...one..._

He leans in, she tilts her face up, her eyes close -

Auld Land Syne echoes from below as Gendry's mouth leaves a scorching imprint on the corner of her mouth, as he murmurs "happy new year, Sansa," and as he walks away from her, down the stairs, and out of her life.

Eyes wide and heart racing, she lifts a trembling hand to her mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! 
> 
> as always, you can come fangirl with me on my [tumblr ](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/jolieunfiltrd)
> 
> hope you all have a lovely night & start to the new year. <3


	2. a collection of moments

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the meat of the story, the good stuff. this fic takes place over the course of one evening. 
> 
> i started writing this during nanowrimo this year and it took me a long time to figure out where it was going, especially because i was writing about things that i struggle with all the time. happiness, how to make meaning in the middle of a struggle/difficult time, what it means to go after your dreams, what it means to put pieces of yourself aside to get there. 
> 
> i hope you enjoy!

It is near midnight on a Friday when Gendry Waters slides onto a barstool and motions for a beer. It had been a shit day, grinding endlessly towards the promotion he felt like he'd never get, in a job that he didn't care about more than it paid the bills and let him work on his craft on the weekends, listening to rock music at top volume and drawing over and over again and pretending like it made him feel alive. It hadn't, not for years, but he didn't know how else to find that thrum of happiness, that contentment that had once existed as he made something unique, something beautiful. He is starting to think about what the point of it all is, when everything feels empty.

He raises his hand to flag down the bartender.

It is near midnight on a Friday when Sansa Stark delivers the last drink to a group of shrieking ladies at the second stop on their bachelorette party and pockets the measly tips into the back pocket of her high-waisted jeans. It had been a shit night, and she could feel her day-life slipping farther away, until all she could see ahead were nights working the bar and days working at the university and so on and so forth until she died that peculiar death that only happened when your dreams die but your heart goes on beating. An act of defiance or stupidity, she'd know when it happened and oh, that email detailing her failure feels closer every day, but she keeps waiting, keeps hoping for something else.

She tosses her braid over her shoulder and turns to the next customer.

It is near midnight on a Friday night when Gendry Waters and Sansa Stark see each other, for the first time in almost ten years. The bar is hazy with second-hand smoke, the low thump of the bass echoing in their ears, but she stumbles and he reaches and something in them says _"oh_."

"Gendry," she says, lowly, as if he was a question that had been answered long ago, and he watches her wine-red lips form the words and he hears the cadence of her voice but it doesn’t make sense.

"Why are you here?"

Sansa sighs, as if he'd disappointed her, somehow, as if he'd asked the same questions that everyone else asked. "What can I get you?"

"A pale ale, please."

She bends over to grab a glass, not thinking that she'd worn this crop top to get more tips, even though she hated it, even though her floral tops were hanging in her wardrobe collecting dust. She bends over, and he catches a too-easy glimpse of the pale skin of her breasts, the freckles that dusted her sternum, the dark lace of her bra contrasting with the ivory of her skin.

Gendry runs his hand through his hair, pushing it back into order and demanding that his thoughts rearrange, once more. This is Sansa. _Sansa_. She is not for looking, not for fantasies, not for dreaming hot in the night and waking up with his hand down his boxers. (Those dreams ought to have been shelved long ago).

She slides him the beer, and he is calm, easy-going, friendly. The Gendry she'd known all those years ago, but something is off, something cracked in his facade. It is like looking at a stranger, it is like looking into a mirror.

"How are you?"

Sansa flashes him a too-brilliant smile. "Fine," and it is a lie and they both know it. "And you?"

"Great," he replies, too easily, too cheerfully.

There had been honesty between them, once. A conversation on a rooftop when they were on the cusp of adulthood, sharing a stolen bottle of booze and pretending like their dreams were within reach, that they only had to stretch out their fingers, to shrug off the things holding them back. Pretending like they weren't the ones at fault.

The stars had been so bright that night, she remembers. Touchable.

He remembers that the moon had reflected on the surface of the pool and it looked as if you could walk on it, if you only tried. He remembered that they'd both ended up on the rooftop to escape, to run from something. He'd been trying to figure out how to break things off with Arya for weeks, and she'd been dancing around her acceptance letters to universities. Ivy Leagues, she'd said, derisively. Like she wasn't planning to follow Robb, to be the good eldest daughter she'd always been, to live up to all reasonable, kind, loving expectations.

Then, another night - one he remembers in vivid technicolor, one that she has re-imagined so many times she hardly knows what the truth is. Champagne and a countdown and practicing what it felt like to have a friend who knew you, completely. 

Sansa turns to another customer, and then another, and another - but there he remains, drinking his beer.

Watching her.

His bright blue gaze tracks the way she bends over the countertop to flirt with the frat boys from the local university, the way she polishes the tabletop after they leave, cringing at their pick-up lines and boisterous laughter. It follows the curve of her spine, the arch of her neck, the sway of her hips as she walks back and forth.

***

She isn’t trying to watch him, out of the corner of her eye - but there he is, existing in her periphery and Sansa feels as though she is orbiting around him as she takes order after order, prepares drink after drink and all the while, her eyes dart to him.

Broader shoulders than she remembers - which is no surprise, considering that they were ten years further along, and though she has tried very hard not to remember the shape of his form, the wisp of his outline in her hazy memories of youth, it is harder not to remember him as he was when he has grown up and the evidence is before her eyes. The jacket hanging over the back of the bar stool is one she can recall, leather and worn and smelling like tobacco smoke from that brief stint as a drummer, but the tattoo on his right arm, she's never seen it before. A phantom sensation possesses her fingertips as she reaches to trace the edges, the softly curving edges of black ink, the picture that is not quite complete, not when it is hidden by the edge of his shirtsleeve. Eyes so light that they seem to glow in the dusk, in the shadows, in the half-light between midnight and dawn. She curls her aching fingertips into a fist at her side.

Sansa's breathing is steady, her hands do not tremble, and she is calm; but there is something in her that wants him to leave – immediately, before he can see through the cracks in her, and something even stronger that wants him to stay.

Not for the first time, Sansa wishes she could drink during her shift. She wishes there was a pleasant buzz emanating into her fingertips, a blanket of quiet over her ever-whirling brain, over the voices that sounded like her family members, like her younger self, detailing a litany of reasons of why she shouldn't be doing this, why she shouldn't be wearing that. There was more than one reason she put away the frill and the embroidery and the delicate part of her that looked like it could easily be broken. It was more than the fear of vulnerability, it was shrugging on a facade of strength that could not be undermined by other's opinions.

She had looked at herself in the mirror that night- ripped jeans and crop top and heavy boots and dark lipstick - and read "don't fuck with me (please)" even as others saw "fuck with me, I dare you, you motherfucker." One is a plea, the other a challenge. Either way, no one tramples her into dust. No one takes her softness, her sweetness, her vulnerability and crushes it within their fist like a butterfly.

(Although, she remembers in the hazy half-light of the bar, Gendry had never looked at her and seen weakness).

She serves him a second beer before he has a chance to ask for it.

***

It is almost three in the morning, the bar deserted except for the two of them, when Sansa rolls her neck and wipes down the bar one final time, having long since grabbed Gendry's glass and tossed it in the washer.

"You live near here?" he asks, and it was almost a question, and if any other man she'd met bartending had asked her, she would have lied, would have lied her best and tried to get far away as quickly as possible. But Gendry - for all of his broad shoulders and dense arms - is no danger to her, no matter who he'd become in these lost years. The danger between them is that he knows her, and she him. 

She says yes, reluctantly – not because she doesn’t want him to walk her home, but because she doesn’t want to say goodbye to him again, not yet. Not when he’s just walked back into her life – a piece from her past in a city where she’s made herself anew over and over again. A man who knew her secrets and ambitions, once. A man who understood what it was like to be a Stark – the fancy parties, the late nights, the social drinking that often went too far. He’d dated her sister, though that feels like long ago.

(Arya, the last she’d heard from her, is very happily ensconced in a private investigation agency, working alongside Jon Snow and happily sleeping with anything with tits. It shouldn’t have mattered – and it didn’t, it _doesn’t_ – but knowing that Arya is a lesbian helps to assuage some of Sansa’s guilt at her joy when she saw Gendry walk into the bar).

(It’s not as if she’ll want him back, now, a voice inside whispers, and she shuts it down furiously as she shrugs on her jacket).

***

He doesn't feel like going home yet, not to the empty apartment, to the lonely bed, to the refrigerator low on milk and the home that wasn't a home but just a place. An address to write on his bank forms, a place to get his bills and the yearly birthday card from his foster father, Dave. Most nights, the idea of retreating to his enclave seemed fine, even appealing, almost. It was his space, he'd worked hard to have it all to himself, and it was a place no one else's mistakes could touch, only his own. There was poetry in that somehow but he'd never been one for poetry. 

Tonight, for some reason, the thought of going home is unbearable. He'd hoped that drinking another beer or two would make it seem like a good option. Go home, take a shower, collapse into bed with wet hair and pretend that he was excited for morning to come. It had had the opposite effect. Gendry had wondered, instead, endlessly, what it would be like to have a life worth living, a home that felt like a haven.

Had thought about - briefly, before he reined his thoughts back in - what was Sansa's idea of home.

Years ago, a decade ago, he would have said: first, pink, then bubbly and surface-level and filled with bright, shiny things to distract from the emptiness. Vapid. Stupid. Shallow. That had been before. He'd been crueler to her in his mind than anyone he'd ever met - and he still didn't know why.

Now, he pictured warmth. Soft, embroidered pillows on a plush velvet couch. Everything in her home, he imagined, before he could stop himself, was meant to be touched. A vase full of flowers, bookshelves that were constantly being rearranged as she read and re-read and loaned and acquired books. Chairs draped in scarves, in soft sweaters, in long corduroy pants. Boots kicked off by the front door, trainers down the hall. Candles with the most outrageous scents strewn across the place like tokens, like prayers. Sage Lavender Eucalyptus. Pumpkin Patchouli Tansy. Peppermint and Oregano.

He drags himself from his own thoughts like a man drowning, a man who wanted to drown, a man who knew he was lost in a fantasy of a place and a girl that did not exist, that had likely never existed.

***

It is just past three in the morning, and Sansa shrugs into a faded denim jacket against the chill of the night, fondling the collar as she does so, as she does every time, as she dreams of the things she could embroider on it, of the intertwining laurels (peace), of the wilted roses (disappointment) draped around each other like lost-long-ago sisters, of the poppies, bright and vibrant around the buttons (I am not _free_ ).

Sansa shrugs into her jacket and Gendry pretends not to watch her do it, not to watch the way her braid falls heavily against her shoulder. He is filled with an inane desire to pull the ponytail from the end, the metaphorical ribbon from her fastened-up personality, her stony façade where a delicate smile used to exist (or a delicate scowl, depending). An insane desire to see her hair cascade free down her back.

Sansa is already berating herself for agreeing for Gendry to walk her home. Her apartment isn't far from the bar, though now she can't remember if she'd gotten the apartment first or the job at the bar. She can't recall quite when she'd started to fold away the things she loved, the parts of herself that she loved; she can recognize, in some distant way, like watching seagulls dive at the beach, that she must have felt vulnerable and afraid and like she had something to prove, but she cannot connect with that person. She is a stranger to herself. She wears dark, merlot-shaded lipstick and eyeliner and she is unafraid of the burly men who stumble over themselves, over the fraternity boys who ask for her number and then call her a bitch when she says no.

There is a softness in her that still exists, somewhere, but this hardness - it is what helped her survive.

(Sometimes she wonders, she aches for the life she could have lived – one where she embraced the florals and the flounce-worthy lace tops, the heels in the precise shade of pink that made her think of new beginnings. One where her softness does not feel like a part of her she must hide in order to survive.

But she made that choice, over and over again, wanting desperately to be taken seriously and to show that she was serious and a serious person who was not phased by frivolity.

She hasn’t had a proper haircut in years and something in her longs for the luxury of self-indulgence even as she berates herself for the very idea. Scissor trims on her split ends over the narrow sink in her bathroom are just _fine_ , thanks).

She doesn't understand why he lingered at the bar but it didn't bother her. There had been an understanding between them, once, years ago. A rapport, a ghost of a relationship between a woman and her sister's boyfriend. Conversations on rooftops, balconies, in the corner of champagne-filled boisterous glittering Stark Christmas parties. Once, she had been sipping bubbly on a Saturday night, her boyfriend-at-the-time's arm wrapped too-tightly around her waist, when she had heard a joke - poorly told and based on a song that she and Gendry had made fun of only a few weeks before - and glanced immediately to where Gendry was sitting on the couch, Arya perched rebelliously on his lap. He had been looking at her, an amused half-smile playing across his lips and she'd flushed without understanding why and broken up with her boyfriend two weeks later without understanding why and refused to be alone in a room with Gendry for years later without understanding why.

It was easy to recognize it now for what it was - a dangerous moment of toeing the line between shallow friendship and genuine connection and she had been so afraid, so fearful of what she would be (a boyfriend-thief of her sister's boyfriend, the ultimate sin) (assuming that he would have wanted to be stolen at all) or what that connection meant (nothing, at the time, but something, now).

It was easy to walk next to him on the broken sidewalk, hands in her pockets and gaze straight ahead. Gendry has pulled a slouchy cap over his mussed hair and some of his hair is sticking in the wrong direction and she will not fix it, she does not even want to fix it, she wonders if he did it on purpose. He looks effortlessly cool in a way that she has never been able to achieve.

She wondered what he was avoiding, who he was avoiding, and she wondered if it was himself.

A stranger and a mirror, all the same.

***

It has been years since she has seen him, and Sansa is not quite ready to see him walk out of her life once more. She can recognize, on some level, that it's ridiculous, to feel some sort of kinship, belonging with this man who she has not seen in a decade, with whom she has shared exactly two serious conversations and less than thirty casual ones, she can recognize that it doesn't make sense. Yet the part of her that had once been dedicated to softness and the curve of a smile had developed nihilistic edges. _Nothing makes sense anymore,_ it argues, and who is she to disagree?

She is twenty-seven, on the brink of success and fulfilling her dreams, yet she feels lonelier than she’s ever been in her entire life. Maybe that is what makes her look at him with fresh eyes, appraising ones. Self-destructive but toeing the line of appropriate behavior with those high-heeled boots.

"How do you feel about donuts?" she says, quietly, determining if she can weed out a piece of truth from this man who is built, right now, entirely of his own misconceptions, just as she is.

His eyebrows quirk up, and he thinks for half-a-second - does he want to go home? still, no, maybe never, and if there's a way for this night to continue, he will take it, because, somehow, for whatever stupid reason, he doesn't want to walk away from her yet - before tossing her a half-grin and gesturing for her to lead on.

Carefully lit streets turn into alleyways, turn into tiptoeing through the parking lot of a fancy apartment building, turn into a laundromat parking lot and here, Sansa turns to him and asks, quietly, for him to wait. She disappears inside.

Gendry is left in his own thoughts again and he wants to protest as the end of her braid vanishes around the door, as he can hear the tinkling door chime and her name called out with vigor and pleasure, just like he imagines a grandmother would (he wouldn't know). He feels desperate, these days, not to be left alone with his thoughts. It is why he is always moving - from home to the running trails to work to class to home to the gym to home to sleep and repeat ad nauseum - because then he will not have to think, not have to wonder if this is all there is. If this is what he would dream of as a boy, with his adopted family, or as a young man, with Arya. He shakes his head at the thought of quicksilver eyes, bruising kisses, wandering hands and always, a want to prove herself and defy the way things were supposed to be.

That is probably what drew him to Arya, even then, that she walked around with metaphorical (and sometimes literal) fingers up to the world and its rules and expectations. It is also what drew him away. Not all of society's ideas about relationships repulsed him, as they did her. Monogamy, for one, turned out to be more important to him than he'd hoped, originally. He'd wanted to be chill and cool and instead he felt like a broken fuck-up; what kind of man wouldn't be absolutely okay with his girlfriend wanting an open relationship? It wasn't even the women that he'd minded, but he had wanted to agree out of wanting to keep her, in some form, and that wasn't enough. (She'd known it, deep down, but it had taken a while for him to realize it too).

He figured out, years later, that he was supposed to agree whole-heartedly, happily, with the idea that their love was strong enough to return to, over and over again.

He wanted a love that he never left. Stability. A reliable love, one he could depend on. It was a cliché, wasn’t it? Orphan boy wants reliable love. He is sinking shamefully into his familiar refrain when the bell above the door ting-a-lings once more.

Sansa slips out of the laundromat clutching a white paper bag that smells of sugar, of baked goods, of a warmth as addicting as her broad smile aimed at those inside. And, oddly enough, it does not fade, not entirely, when she looks at him, standing there with his hands in his pockets, thinking of her sister.

"Where do you eat them?" Looking around the parking lot, there is nothing, not even a curb. Does she sit right here on the ground and devour them? Does she take them back to her apartment and sit on the velvet couch, licking her fingers between bites as she eats them in sweatpants? He cannot decide which is more tantalizing to him, to the hind-brain that is more attracted to her by the year, apparently. Exponential growth or something. 

"I usually go to this park nearby," she replies, and her grin now is disconcerting, because it contains a hint of mischief that he rarely remembers on her face. It makes her blue eyes look like starlight is reflected in them, like some cartoon drawing, and he is drawn into her magic despite himself.

"Sounds good."

And they walk on.

It is only once they have hopped the low, stone-melded fence and started to move through the park that Gendry realizes it is not a park at all, it is a graveyard.

Tombstones rise up into the mist, flowers wilted and drooping over old headstones and new alike. There are unmarked graves, those with just a cross or a Star of David, and then there are towering tombs with statues of avenging angels. Sansa moves purposefully towards a particular tomb, with a wall low-enough for sitting on, low enough someone could easily perch on it and lean, blasphemously, against the marble edifice.

"Sometimes I come here after my shifts," she confesses as they get settled.

Gendry takes it in, the too-pretty girl turned into take-no-shit woman perched on a tomb in the dead of night. Something about it seemed to make the furrow between her brows relax, loosen her shoulders, offer some sort of magic in the dusky moonlight. It shines on her face and fractures everything he'd once thought about her. 

"Do you always bring donuts?" It was the only reasonable question he had, the only one he could ask aloud.

Sansa smiles, and opens the bag to offer him one. They are warm and gooey and the icing will stick to his fingers for days. He is sure the look on his face is comical, but she does not laugh, only looks at him with those wide blue-eyes, unassuming and unrelenting. 

"Why are you here?" 

"Here on this planet or...?" he is teasing, but she isn't and the jocular faux-smile fades from his face as quickly as it came. "I didn't know you worked at that bar, if that's what you're asking." He sounds almost defensive, and he knows it. He takes another bite of donut. (It is ridiculously good, the type of donut that people would write songs about, if they wrote songs about donuts). (They don't). 

"It's not." 

"Then what are you asking?" 

"What are you doing here, at a graveyard, in the middle of the night, with me?" The last two words seem to slip out without her knowledge, without her direct pre-approval and she looks away, out into the headstones. She’d been going for honesty, but to reveal his innermost workings, not hers, not her quiet belief that she would never be quite good enough for someone to intentionally want to spend time with her.

She'd spent much of the last decade alone - pretending it was independence and growth, and pretending it wasn't born of a loneliness so intense the mere idea of standing in a crowded room again, of talking to her parents in person, of FaceTiming more than one sibling per month was enough to make her sweat, to cry.

"The graveyard was _your_ idea," he starts with the easiest, most obvious answer, pointing a half of a donut at her, half-accusing and half-teasing. 

She finishes her first, and starts on another, no longer afraid to be gluttonous when it pleases her. In that, at least, she's found freedom. But she just shrugs at his argument. "And the rest?" 

Gendry shakes his head, drawing his shoulders up - and she just _knows_ , without a doubt, he is going to lie to her - before he collapses down and rests his elbows on his thighs, staring out into the mist. "I just... couldn't bear the thought of going home, of doing the same fucking thing I do every night, to wake up and do the same thing I do every day. It feels so relentless, and so pointless." 

"What do you do every day?" 

"I go for a run, I go to work - I'm the lead accountant at the firm, now -" he looks at her as if this should be amusing, somehow, and it isn't, not really, he's always been smart with numbers, but she can see the marks that years of being defensive have left on his shoulders - "I go to the gym, and then back to the apartment to draw until I can’t help but sleep." 

"You run _and_ go to the gym every day?" 

Gendry shrugs. Sansa looks at him with new eyes, thinking only, what demons are you trying to outrun? Are they the same as mine - the loneliness, the relentless of the everyday when the dreams of who you wanted to be seem so close and yet, so much further out of reach?

She finishes her donut and licks her fingers clean. He does his best not to notice, and she can’t help but notice that he is staring at her fingers like he'd like to devour her with the same fervor.

“What do you do every day?” he asks, voice quiet as he leans back against the tomb.

Sansa matches his pose, aware that her crop top has revealed the sliver of her stomach, aware that it is not flat, aware that she doesn’t care, around him. She knows him or knew him once and maybe could know him again – and will trade him this, a secret for a secret. One lonely heart to another.

“I’m waiting to hear back about my dissertation defense date,” she admits. “So, I teach and I write, and I work at the bar whenever I can.” 

“Your dissertation?”

"I'm finishing up my doctorate at UKL this spring." Her spine straightens with the quiet confession. "I specialized in the historical intersection of women and politics, with an emphasis on the downfall of Daenerys I."

"Fuck," he says, admiringly, wishing he had something to toast her with besides a mostly finished donut. "That's incredible."

Sansa looks wistfully out into the mist, encroaching on their space with a steadiness that would have chased her home, if Gendry wasn't here with her. She isn't afraid of ghosts, necessarily, but the mist hides things that she'd rather be kept out in the open. Secrets, rats, murderers. "Yeah, hopefully I'll defend it in a month or so, and then I'll be Dr. Stark."

A half-smile crosses her lips, thinking about the graduation day in her potential future - sun shining on her dark robes, hair gleaming under the silly cap, and proud family beaming from the audience. She remembers the dress she bought in the city years ago, planning to wear it under her robes - it is floral and a sea-foam green and it is the prettiest thing she owns and she cannot help but think it would be a mistake to wear it now, now that she's so close to the end.

Not now that they finally take her seriously. She didn't like Dr. Lannister, not at all, but his singular piece advice at the start of her program had been good. _Put away the embroidery,_ he'd said. T _here's no room here for the silly romanticism of your master's degree. I don't care,_ he'd nearly sneered, _but other faculty might be less forgiving_. She was the lone girl in her entire cohort, and they never let her forget it. 

She bites her lip and thinks about the pair of heels tucked in the back of her closet, a blush pink so pale it was almost nude, with a delicate line of seed pearls tracing along the arch of her foot. Princess shoes, not scholar shoes.

(There was a stack of shoes in her closet, and the embroidered blouses and skirts and dresses took over half the small closet in her tiny apartment, but she hadn't been able to consider tossing them out. Instead, she had adopted a monochromatic work uniform. No nonsense, no frills, no fuss. Dark lipstick, hair pulled back, and slowly, she was taken more seriously in classes, by her mentors, by the students she taught.

And oh, how she _hated_ it).

"That's really cool, Sansa," Gendry says, nudging her with his elbow and offering a congratulatory smile.

"Thanks," she says, suddenly dying to change the subject. "That tattoo looks new. At least, I don't remember it from when we were younger." Just saying _we_ is enough to bring a blush to her pale cheeks, enough to make her grateful for the shroud of darkness here in the night. Admitting that she noticed something about him, it feels like she is treading dangerous waters. 

He immediately shrugs out of his leather jacket and pulls up his sleeve, showing off the full line-work and detailing. It's beautiful, a stag running through the woods, wide antlers spreading back onto his shoulder and back legs stretched just barely onto his chest, and she cannot help herself, not this time. Sansa reaches out with fingertips she is hardly aware of, tracing the outline and marveling. He shivers and they both pretend it is from the cold. 

"Any tattoos for you?" he asks, just to have something to say besides: please, do not stop, please stop I can't bear your tenderness any longer, I feel as though I will crack under your attention - 

"Three, actually," she replies, pulling her hand back with a sense of loss, watching as his eyebrows raise and ask the obvious question (of what) and the less-obvious but still transparent (but where?). 

"I showed you mine." He is teasing as he leans back against the tomb, and though she know he would not mind if she never showed him a single one, she takes it as a challenge, as a dare and for some reason she will not back down. These, at least, are no persona. The tattoos are pieces of herself, reminders of what she loves and what she treasures.

"I know." She unzips her left boot and shows him the intertwining triangles just above her ankle bone, then before he can ask what it means, twists her body around to fold her ear forward and reveal the tiny howling wolf inked there. For as much as she left her family behind, for as much as she has been alone, they are always with her. A nickname from her dad, a reminder of the large wolf-like dogs that howl around the property, the ones that belong to her brothers, the one she dreams of sometimes, at night. All white and delicate, but with fierce teeth.

"I didn't think you'd be one for tattoos." His voice is low, impressed; he is having one revelation after another, tonight, about the girl he thought he’d known, about the woman she was becoming. 

She does not answer, but searches his eyes for something he's not sure he possesses, not anymore, a permission to share secrets, to let him in. 

Sansa unbuttons her jeans and pulls down the side over her left hip, revealing the curve of her underwear (high-waisted, blush-pink, a thin strap that darts high across her hip and disappears) - he glances up at her face and she is determinedly crimson, but meets his eyes unabashedly. Her milky-pale skin that seems to glow in the moonlight. 

A series of delicate flowers cascades around her hip, like a circular bouquet imprinted into her skin, delicately traced in black with no color, as if it had all been leeched away. He doesn't recognize the delicate blooms but knows she will - Sansa, who always knew the meanings of flowers, of words in strange languages, who solved the mysteries before anyone else and savored the process of doing so. His fingers hover above the petals, and he does not look at her as he asks, "what do they mean?" 

For this is Sansa, who has a meaning behind everything, and who didn't give him enough time to ask about the others but here, with her jeans folded down and her skin bared and after giving him the cursed gift of knowing what she wore underneath, she pauses. Gives him a moment. Invites him in.

But she laughs and avoids his eyes, speaking straight out to the ghosts. "I got them because they are pretty and I love them and I wanted to let myself love what I love." 

It is a powerful statement, but he looks at her dark lipstick and crop-top with the fuck-with-me-I-dare-you boots and knows it isn't the truth, even for how much it sounds like it could be, in another light. This is Sansa Stark hiding, this is Sansa Stark afraid. She forgets that he knew her, once. Maybe he knows her still. He waits a beat, then traces the circle with a rough fingertip - (he can think of times he's fucked that have felt less intimate than this, less soul-bearing).

"But what do they mean?" he repeats, quietly, fingertip tracing the petals over and over again, and she turns to look at him, eyes wide and gleaming. 

She whispers: "Faithfulness and perseverance." 

And the mist creeps in. 

***

He thought it might feel sacrilegious to walk here in the graveyard, but it feels almost freeing, as if he can say anything here, with no consequences. Who will judge him, the dead? Sansa Stark, the girl wrapped up in her own thoughts so tightly they're nearly a shroud? Himself? (The worst option of the three, though it's a close call). 

They talk about the inane, the dull, the gossip, trading secrets about family and family friends until they run out, until they're near the older gravestones, dark and with hardly a name or date in sight. 

Sansa looks up at the moon as if it will tell her its secrets, wrapping her arms across her chest, clasping her elbows and sighing heavily. 

"What is it?" 

"I thought," she hesitates, but continues. "I thought I'd be happier by now." Honesty is easier, here, in the dark, in the middle of the night, with a boy she might have known the idea of, once, and somehow wants to know more of, now.

He quirks an eyebrow, not bothering to tell her he thought she was happy. They are above lying to each other, by now, he thinks. 

"I thought that getting here, to this point – it would be enough. But it’s not." 

"I thought that money would give me the freedom to make the life I wanted," he replies, shoving his hands deep into his pockets and looking up to where the stars might me, in another place without so much light pollution. "But it feels just as out of reach now as it did ten years ago." 

The confessions, once they begin, do not stop - and they stand shoulder to shoulder, looking up at the night sky. 

"I have no idea what to do with my life, how to make a difference." 

"I feel too old for childish dreams of feeling fulfilled every day." 

"I can't run as fast as I want to, and I feel like it's just another part of my life I'm failing at."

"I haven't gone on a date in ages, even though I always thought I'd be settled down with a family, by now."

"Yeah," she sighs. "I get that."

"I hate my job but it pays the bills."

At this, she lets out a short laugh. "I hate my job and it hardly pays _any_ bills."

"The bar or the teaching?"

"Both?"

He snorts and they sit in silence for a moment more, before she exhales what feels like the worst piece of herself out into the night.

"I don't even feel like me, anymore." 

"Me neither." His answer is immediate, quiet, sure.

Sansa turns to face him, keeping her arms wrapped tightly around herself. "Why stay in your job if you hate it?" 

"I don't hate it," he protests, though it is weak, even to his ears. "It's just not enough." 

"Why not take classes at night, or draw at night?" 

Gendry goes to run his hands through his hair and stops at the beanie, pulling it off to satisfy the urge to mess something up. "I do, I - I spend every Thursday in drawing class, and I've been taking classes through KLU for graphic design but it's - I think I could be really good, if I just had a little more time." It's taken time - a lot of time, and hard work, and endless practicing, over and over again, but he's started to work as a graphic designer, to get freelance contracts on the side. He never sleeps, and it's not constant work, but he's getting better, and each time a new project comes through, he feels a little more alive. 

He can see in her pale blue eyes that she believes him without seeing a single thing he's ever done, and it is more refreshing than it ought to be. She nods. "You'll figure it out." 

"Yeah," he agrees, exhaling and offering her a wry smile. "The middle sucks though." 

"Yeah, it does," she says, quietly, chancing a glance at him before she goes to sit on the low stone fence in the corner of the graveyard, shrouded by heavy tree branches and covered in shadows. 

He follows her readily. 

He wants to ask why she is unhappy, but knows from personal experience it doesn't work like that. Even knowing the cause, there's no magic fix, no quick snap of the fingers and _bam_ meditation was the answer all along. Or eating right, exercising, whatever. There is an edge to her now that wasn't there before - a sharpness that ought to have made him back away, but instead, it draws him closer. He asks something else instead. 

"Why don't you feel like yourself?" 

Sansa digs her heels into the dirt, savoring the satisfying squelch as they dip into the mud. "I feel like all of this is just... trying on a character." He doesn't need to ask what she means. When he saw her in the bar, the sense of wrongness, the question he'd asked about why she was there - it wasn't that she was in a bar, or even working there; it was that she looked uneasy in her skin, as though nothing fit quite right (even though the clothes fit her like a glove, even though the lipstick was the perfect shade of bloodstained roses).

"So why do it?" 

She sighs and rubs her palms on the torn jeans, remembering and debating how much to share, how much she wants to let him in, how much she'll regret it tomorrow. "My mentor didn't think I would be taken seriously if I continued to dress in a very feminine way. And he was right. Nobody thinks I'm silly, now, or too pretty to be smart." She wishes, desperately, that she had taken up smoking all those years ago, that she had something to hold in her hands besides the fragility of that excuse and the evidence of how much better she was treated after monochromatizing her wardrobe, after drawing her hair back into ponytails, after taking up dark lipstick and large glasses and refusing to take any shit. 

(There has to be a middle ground, right? Between softness and spikes?) 

Gendry settles next to her on the low wall, his legs stretching out much further. "Your mentor sounds like a real treat," he muses, hoping to see a smile flash on her face, to see some of the weight of expectations lift. 

"Yeah, he sucked, actually." 

"But you still follow his advice?" 

"It got me this far, didn't it?" 

Gendry tilts his head. "He wrote your dissertation?" 

She shakes her head, eyes narrowed at him suspiciously. 

"He taught your classes?" 

Another shake. 

"Then he didn't -" 

Sansa rolls her eyes, glad there wasn't a trace of condescension in his voice, only gentle teasing and careful honestly, otherwise she might have walked away completely. "Okay, no, he didn't get my doctorate, but he showed me how to be taken seriously." 

Gendry stares at her, blue eyes searching for some sort of truth in her eyes that she's not sure exists. "If someone can't take you seriously, that sounds like their problem, not yours." 

She stares back, unashamed and unabashed and embarrassed to hear it laid out like that, so plainly. It's not that he's wrong, necessarily, just that it definitely wasn't that simple. Not as a young woman fresh out of her master's in a male-dominated field, in a male-dominated cohort, in a group of caustic men who never outgrew their fraternity phases. She hadn't made many friends in grad school, hadn't wanted to. Hadn't dated either. The Sansa Stark they knew wore dark clothes and strode in a straight line in sensible flats, just attractive enough to be noticed, but not too fuckable. 

She had been riding a thin fucking line over the last three years.

But now - 

She thinks longingly of the seafoam green dress in her closet, of the pretty pink heels, of the soft shade of lipstick she'd never managed to purge from her vanity, of the embroidered blouses and the sewing kit that has been sitting on the edge of her desk for months, now, waiting for her to finish her dissertation and learn something new. 

Sansa fears, suddenly, that she has compromised herself and what she loves for so long that she doesn't even know who she is, or what she loves - but there are a few things, she reminds herself, that she'd stuck to her metaphorical guns on. Her thesis, her research, her class topics. She was a contributing reason to the increased number of female graduate students, she taught some killer inter-sectional feminism courses, she... she did a fucking lot in her time at KLU. 

Didn't she deserve to feel like herself, too? What else had she worked so hard for, if not for freedom? 

"Is it all pretending?" he asks, as if it has just occurred to him that he may not know this version of Sansa Stark, after all. 

"No," she says, thoughtfully, "there are parts of me that I've outgrown, that I put away on my own." Cruelty, classism, the view that money can solve all of her problems and then some. 

He waits, patiently. 

"And I like feeling serious, like I fit in." 

"But you don't feel like yourself." 

"Yeah," she sighs. "But the pretend Sansa Stark fits in so nicely." 

He leans in to her, just slightly. "Who is to say the real Sansa Stark won't?" 

"Well, rampant misogyny, for one." Sansa brings up her fingers and ticks off the reasons. "Sexism, women aren't taken as seriously in academia to start with..." 

"Alright, alright," he laughs, lifting his hands in surrender. "There's a lot of systematic problems that aren't solved with a pretty dress." 

Sansa's eyes cut to him, somehow annoyed that he's understood what she's saying in just a few minutes, frustrated that for all the people she's met, the boys she's tried to date, her well-meaning but not-great-at-execution family members - all of the people in her world, and only he has understood her so quickly, so easily. 

Only Gendry has radically and totally accepted her - dress dipped in moonlight or heavy boots and pretenses. 

It is as disconcerting as it is enthralling. 

*** 

"Do you want to see the pretty dress?" Sansa asks, curious and hesitant, as the mist intertwines along their feet. "We're not that far from my apartment." 

He looks to her, gaze darting to her eyes, her lips, and skimming down her body in a quick trilogy of sins. "Sure," he says, sounding casual, though it is just as much a facade as her lipstick, as the boots.

They walk silently to her apartment, hands jammed into pockets against the chill of the evening (morning, really, now), pretending as though she has not invited him into her home, pretending not to wonder what their past selves would think of them, what their mutual friends would, what Arya -

There's a passcode, a door she holds for him as he slips in alongside her, close enough - for the first time that night - that she can smell him, the leather and neroli and bourbon. It's enough to transport her back, for a moment, to that rooftop, years and years ago. She remembers his lips against her skin like kindling to a flame, but then he left, and she reconstructed that night so many times in her mind that some of the meaning was lost to fantasy.

What if he'd taken her in his arms?

What if she'd gone home with him?

What if they'd started something - who would they be, now?

It doesn't matter, she thinks, shutting the door resolutely behind her, what could have been. As habit dictates, she digs out spare change from the donut run and drops it into a small jar on her kitchen counter with a little label on the side that reads, in perfect cursive, "dog fund." For someday. Someday soon, judging by the contents of the jar.

As habit dictates, she strips off her jacket and hangs it on the hook. She turns around to find Gendry studying her apartment with a thoughtful gaze.

"What?" she can't help herself from asking.

Gendry smiles, ruefully rubbing his face as he replies, "Nothing."

The dark velvet couch is faded from the sun in some spots but incredibly comfortable, and the art surrounding the TV like an encroaching rosebush was a gift from her mother upon her completion of her master's degree. The coffee table is too modern, the rug too red, and the curtains are a lush blush pink that looked rather garish in the light of day but she wanted light-blocking and it was that or a terrifically condiment-worthy mustard. The kitchen is the apartment complex's version of modern, all gleaming white tiles and shining countertops and it's too much, even with the numerous plants she's tried to cultivate.

She wants to ask what he expected, but she has some idea of what he sees - for all the textures, the softness, something about it still feels cold and untouched and impersonal. Instead, she gestures for him to follow her into her bedroom.

He follows her willingly, leaving his jacket and beanie slung over the side of the couch, toeing out of his shoes in the corner before besmirching her carpet with the mud on them, and there is no hunger in his eyes, just a frank curiosity, as if being here, in her space, is answering questions about her he didn't know he had, and inspiring a whole set of new ones. (There aren't any family pictures. One with Robb and Sansa in matching tassels, a far-off picture of Arya and Jon climbing a mountain that he recognized because he'd seen it in Jon's apartment a few months ago, and a few of Bran and Rickon attempting ridiculous tricks with Bran's wheelchair. But not one of the elder Starks).

She carefully edges open the wooden door of her closet - experience has taught her it will stick if she tugs too hard - and reaches into the back, pulling out the dress that is soft and delicate and looks like something Aphrodite would wear, rising from the sea.

It makes her smile just to look at it, just to cradle it in her hands, and when she looks at Gendry, his bright blue eyes are focused on the curve of her lips.

An urge races through her, quiet and demanding and a repeating refrain: she wants to kiss him.

"You look happy just to hold it."

Her smile widens, even as she hesitates, even as she asks, quietly, "Is that not... superficial, of me?"

"To like a dress?" His voice is just incredulous enough to be convincing.

"Alright, alright," she murmurs, focus back on the embroidery on the dress in her hands.

"You should wear it." Gendry says, suddenly.

Sansa looks up at him, realizing for the first time that she invited this man into her bedroom, and he is standing close to her, and his blue eyes are fierce and -

She wants to kiss him.

"You should wear whatever you want," he says, lowly.

It is silly, right, to want to kiss a man for telling you to wear whatever you want? Only, that isn't exactly it. She finds herself drawn to him, so she pulls away and carefully hangs the dress in her closet, in its rightful place. It's that - she knows him, and while he'd once seemed as incalculable and incomprehensible as the stars themselves, he'd always been able to see right through her projections and vanities and carefully constructed shields. Tonight, this strange night of seeing him in a bar and wandering through the graveyard, it only confirmed what she'd thought. Something in him understood something in her - and vice versa. She'd watched him strip down his facade as easily as taking off the beanie on his mussed hair, listened as they traded secrets in the shadows.

She wants to kiss him.

"Why are you here?" she asks.

The corner of his mouth quirks, as though she'd made a joke, as though they were teasing each other, as though she wasn't deadly serious, as though it was the wrong question to ask.

"Do you want me to go?" He steps closer, and she turns and suddenly they are so close, they are breathing the same air. Her inhales mirror his exhales, her eyes trace the curve of his lips, the cutting line of his jaw, the slope of his neck. 

"No," she murmurs, tipping her head up, bringing her hands to his chest. She can almost hear the strains of Auld Lang Syne once more, but this - this is so much better. There are no pretenses between them, besides the ones that are between all people. As much honesty as she can offer, he has given right back to her.

It is as disarming as it is lovely.

She wants to kiss him - but he beats her to it.

***

Gendry kisses her against the wall of her apartment, hot and searching and hesitant, even as he wraps his arms around her waist, even as she molds herself into him. It is easy, to give into the physical desires; less easy, to consider the man behind them, but either way she feels confident in her choice. His lips blaze a trail across her collarbone and she looks up at her ceiling, wondering what ten-years-ago Sansa would think of her now.

Thief, her memory-self murmurs quietly, quiet as a ghost, quiet as the girl she once was.

She wonders, briefly, what Arya would think of her now - but resolutely sneaks her hands beneath Gendry's shirt, dragging her manicured fingernails up his abdomen until he shivers, until her hands are flush against his flesh, allowing his warmth to seep into her, to pervade her every motion, to help her stay in the present moment. Here, now. With Gendry.

It is not enough, to feel warm. Sansa wants to burn under him, over him, around him, until the desire consumes them both and there is nothing left for the vulnerability, nothing left for the knowing. She wants to wake in the not-so-distant morning as ashes.

She slips out from under his arm and stands in front of the mirror, unabashedly meets her own eyes – joyous, with no hint of rebellion or doing this for spite, just for the desire of it, the desire for him and the spark between them that feels as though it will burn through her and leave her a glowing shell. She is half-naked, her jeans are un-buttoned, her socks do not match, but Gendry follows her gladly, as if drawn into her spell. He wraps his arms around her waist and presses kisses to the slope of her neck.

"You want this?" she asks, aware that her voice is husky but for the first time in a long time, it is not artifice.

"Can't you tell?" he replies, fingertips tracing up her ribs as if deciding which one to extract, which one to pull out and return to his body once more, mirrored gaze flickering between the lace he’d caught a glimpse of earlier and the flush spreading across her collarbone, as he presses his hips into hers, proof of his desire evident.

Sansa licks her lips and twists in his arms and his mouth is against hers, hot and bruising and sinful, once more.

***

It is near eleven on a Saturday when Sansa Stark wakes, draped like a starfish over a broad-backed dark-haired man. It takes a moment for the night to come rushing after her, for the memories to consume her in a flash. She smiles and presses a kiss in-between his shoulder-blades, settling in closer. It is the start of a promising day, despite the growling of her stomach, despite the ever-growing quiet voice of panic in her mind that wonders what her family will think, wonders if this is anything for them to think about, wonders if one night was enough for Gendry.

It wasn't enough for her.

It is near eleven on a Saturday when Gendry Waters wakes, in an unfamiliar apartment, with an unfamiliar arm draped around his waist. His head does not ache, his mouth is no more dry than it is every other morning, so he cannot blame the drink that it takes a moment to recall where he is, who he's with. A delicate kiss to the slope of his back sends a shiver of warmth down his spine, and he remembers: _Sansa_. He feels himself starting to worry, to worry that this was a one-off, that her family's presence would be enough to bid him goodbye at the door, that the honesty he'd given was too much, and she didn't want any part of him. He wanted to be consumed by her.

He flips over under the floral quilt, the soft cotton sheets, to see the red-haired woman who had haunted his dreams for over a decade now. Her eyes are soft, even as there is tightness around her mouth, a wariness in the furrow of her brow.

"G'morning," he murmurs, leaning in for a soft kiss, waiting until he feels her relax fully to pull back and press his forehead against hers, fingertips tracing up her side and across the tattoo on her hip.

"Morning," she replies, sighing into his touch, a pleased look on her face, hair rumpled around her head and indentations from her pillow on her cheek and he's never seen someone so beautiful. "Hungry?"

He grins, wolfish and mischievous. "Ravenous," he growls into her throat.

(It takes a while for them to get out of bed).

Eventually, they make it to a very late brunch.

She wears the high-heeled don't-fuck-with-me boots, dark jeans, and an indigo blouse with gladiolus flowers embroidered around the hem that she must put back on three times, as Gendry keeps distracting her out of it. They argue about social policies, he shows her his drawings, she insists on another round of mimosas. He intertwines their feet at the table, he asks her when her dissertation is, he asks her on another date. She shares her pancakes, hoards her bacon, and the smile on her face is so bright, it is nearly blinding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic is just a snippet in the lives of two people and doesn't really show the full breadth of what growth looks like, so i wanted to add a bit more context here. 
> 
> love doesn't "fix" anyone. 
> 
> in the afterworld of this fic: Sansa struggles for a long time to balance different aspects of her personality, of her style, of what it means to feel like herself. some days it is embroidery and dark lipstick, on graduation day it's the seafoam dress with pretty heels and her hair curled, and eventually (once she starts working at a job where she feels fulfilled and challenged and appreciated as a whole person) she is able to embrace both the softness and the spikes. her family slowly but surely works to embrace her as a total person, and they care a lot less than she worries they will about Gendry. (Arya, in particular, laughs her head off when she hears, gives Sansa a high-five, tells Gendry not to fuck it up, and then orders another round at the bar). 
> 
> Gendry keeps plugging away at both the accountant job and the graphic design, though eventually he takes a step back from the firm in order to devote more time to his passion. he goes to therapy, (so does Sansa), he works through a lot of emotional baggage he's holding onto from his time with Arya/his childhood/whether or not he wants to have a relationship with his bio-mom/dad. 
> 
> they do, eventually, get a dog. Gendry pretends to protest but secretly wants one as much as she does, and Lady becomes his running buddy in the mornings, which suits Sansa just fine, because then the two of them crawl back into bed with her with coffee and donuts and it is just really, really nice. 
> 
> \--- 
> 
> thanks so, so much, for reading.


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